The Saturday following the cookout at the Spearfish Lake House was Activities Day at Southern Michigan University.

Though the weather had been nicer than usual for September in the days since classes started for the year, the day turned out overcast and spitting rain, not a good day for setting up tables outdoors and expecting a well-attended gathering.

Most student activities at the college were self-organized; while the administration recognized the existence of the SIGs and smaller clubs, it didn’t have anything to do with running them other than providing the space on the college’s internet servers for things like the Activities Board and other notices. However, Activities Day was something of an exception to the rule, if only because the school carried the day on its official calendar. So when the weather forecast was far from promising, Nick Steward, the president of the student council – itself an organization that was recognized but not endorsed by the college – asked the Dean of Students to be allowed to move the activity into the Community Services Center, DeRidder could do little but approve. He did grump about it, but an announcement was made on the main General Announcement Board, on the Activities Board, and an e-mail notification was sent to all students.

Cody noted the change when he logged onto the board routinely that morning. He didn’t have more than a passing interest in student activities – he had more than enough to do with his job, studying, and keeping the house going. Two or three times he went on to the next item of interest, but something he couldn’t have explained drew him back to the announcement of moving the Activities Day tables.

Cody had never been able to understand what it was that had led him to Jan’s house the night he had rescued her from her father and her brother. While he knew from her appearance at school earlier that day she was having some family troubles, he didn’t know any more details, and she was at best a classmate, not even a casual friend. But he had some kind of hunch that he was needed at her house, and had the wisdom or the luck to act on his hunch.

Charlie Wexler, the Spearfish Lake Police Chief and a good friend, explained to Cody sometime afterward that most good police officers had a nose for where trouble was brewing, something like a sixth sense. The trick, Charlie had explained, was to know when to act on such hunches.

While Cody wasn’t religious, he’d sometimes thought he must have been hearing a message from God that sent him to Jan’s house that night. He wasn’t sure he believed in that, but he wasn’t sure he believed in sixth senses or ESP, either. The truth was that he didn’t know what to think, but it wasn’t the only time he’d had such hunches – or Jan, either.

One night about a year before, he’d been working a night shift as a part-timer in Amherst, a small town not far from Hawthorne. It had been dull; there was literally nothing happening, and the town had pretty well rolled up the streets for the night. But as Cody drove the patrol car around town, every time he went across a bridge in the middle of town he somehow knew something wasn’t right.

Finally, since he had nothing better to do, he stopped the patrol car, got out, and shined a flashlight around, to discover a small child tangled in a bush down at the edge of the stream. The slope was steep enough and loose enough that he didn’t dare try to get down it himself, so he’d called in the local fire department; it took ropes and ladders for the firemen to get down to the child to rescue him. It turned out the kid had a history of sleepwalking, and it didn’t take much imagination to figure out what had happened and why he hadn’t been reported missing.

When rescued, the kid was unconscious and badly hypothermic; Cody had acted on the message just in time – but just like with Jan, he had no idea how or why he’d gotten any message at all.

Back while they’d still been in Spearfish Lake, Jan had once had a similar hunch, which led her to rescue a small child from drowning. Cody had been working elsewhere at the time, but somehow knew something wasn’t right with her. Both of them had picked up the message that time. There had been a couple of other incidents, neither one quite as serious.

On the other hand, there had been several other times when it turned out that people had been in trouble when Cody was nearby, but he hadn’t picked up an inkling of it. So whatever was generating his hunches didn’t always work.

After more than a little thought and discussions with Jan, they’d evolved a theory that was little more than a wild-ass guess, with nothing whatsoever to support it: if it was ESP – which Cody somehow doubted – maybe it only worked between certain people. Maybe it was something like radio; if two radios were tuned to different frequencies, they couldn’t communicate. The logic or the knowledge of the hunches couldn’t be pushed much further than that, but he had adequate proof that it worked for him – sometimes, that is.

So, when Jan asked him if he was going to get around to fixing the doorbells that day, he said, “Maybe later. I think I’ll wander over and check out Activities Day first.”

“You know,” she replied. “I’ve been thinking I ought to go over there myself.”

*   *   *

In the days since the orientation session, Jack had searched the Activities Board time and again looking for some hint that there might be some sort of bird watching or birding SIG or other group, or at least someone else interested in the topic. Much to his surprise, he hadn’t found a thing. It seemed unbelievable, since Southern Michigan University had a good biology program, especially in wildlife biology, but Jack knew as well as anyone that sometimes the unbelievable can be true.

He had also asked around the department on occasion, and had never turned up a hint of other birders on campus. He still found nothing.

Vixen was about as frustrated over it as he was. They’d both looked forward to finding other birders, to share their interests, to have someone else to talk to – and to convince themselves that they weren’t the only people in the world who were interested in the subject. Oh, Jack had shared his interests with others online, but to actually meet another bird enthusiast had been an exceedingly rare thing for him.

“We could go to Activities Day,” he said to Vixen that morning. “But with nothing on the Activities Board, I’m wondering if it’d be worth the effort. If there’s nothing on the board, what are the chances someone will have set up a table?”

“We could set one up,” Vixen suggested. “We could just put up a sign that says something like, ‘Interested in a birding SIG? Talk to us.’”

“Well, I suppose,” Jack agreed unenthusiastically. “It’ll probably be a whole lot of nothing, but it might be worth a try. We don’t have a table, though.”

“We don’t need a table,” she replied. “We could just tape the sign to a wall or something.”

“All right,” he conceded. “It’s better than hanging around here and hitting the books.”

“It would be a crappy day for birding too,” she replied pragmatically. “It would be wet and nasty hanging around some swamp.”

*   *   *

It had been a heady week for both Nancy and Logan. After the cookout ended the Sunday before, they’d gone back upstairs to Nancy’s apartment with the idea of just hanging out a little. One thing led to another, and he wound up spending the night in bed with her again.

On Monday morning they had to face the music – a nearly magical weekend had come to an end, and it was time to get back to their classes. Early in the morning after Nancy kissed him goodbye, he walked back to his dorm room to change clothes, shave, and do a few other such tasks. He had to pick up his computer for the day’s classes – he’d left it in his room when he’d gone out for lunch on Saturday and never made it back.

When he got to his room he found Trent groping around, trying to get his brain up to operating power and not doing too well with it in the face of a rather bad hangover generated while watching pro football the day before. “Where the fuck have you been all weekend?” Trent managed to say.

“Over at my girlfriend’s place,” Logan answered smugly.

“Two nights?” Trent snorted and managed to add, “That must have been …” before reality stopped him in his tracks. “Girlfriend? You? What the hell were you doing with a girl?”

“Having a very good time,”

“Come on! Girlfriend? You don’t do girls. Don’t bullshit me!”

“No bullshit. She’s a nice girl, too.”

“Bullshit. You don’t do girls. You said you do guys. How did you come up with a girlfriend?”

“By being sweet, charming, handsome, sober, and honest,” Logan grinned.

“I still don’t believe it. How did you meet this chick?”

“At the GLBT SIG meeting, would you believe?”

“You picked up a girl where?”

“It helps to be bi,” Logan laughed. “It increases the options.”

“Holy shit,” Trent replied, gently shaking his aching head. “You guys get it coming and going, don’t you?”

Logan had seen very little of Trent since.

Much of the time since the previous Sunday had been spent at Nancy’s apartment. It hadn’t all been sex and cuddling; both of them had been behind on their studying after having spent the weekend getting to know each other in more ways than one. So both of them hit the books – well, actually, the computers – hard, but they caught up quickly since they could bounce things off each other as the result of sharing mostly the same classes.

Logan actually spent a couple of nights that week in the dorm room, mostly with an unbelieving Trent shaking his head – but then Trent had seen Logan and Nancy together in the dining hall, with their computers open and busy discussing class work. It still seemed difficult to believe – how could a nerdy little gay guy like Logan pick up an obviously nice-looking chick like Nancy? But the evidence was in front of him … some guys have all the luck!

Nancy and Logan had once again spent the night together in her apartment and bed on Friday, then Saturday morning got up and went over to the dining hall for a very late breakfast. While they ate, they discussed what they planned to do for the day; spending most of it in her apartment seemed to have a high priority.

“We ought to take a swing by the Activities Day tables,” Logan suggested. “I don’t know if I’m glad or sorry to say it, but I don’t think we’re going to be very active in the GLBT SIG, but we could check out what else is there.”

“It seems incredible to say it, but you’re probably right,” she shook her head. “And maybe something else there might be worth looking into. I mean, we probably ought to come up with something other than studying and hanging out together, if you know what I mean.”

“I think we’ve both come to enjoy it an awful lot,” he smiled. “But you’re probably right. Let’s walk through there and see what happens. Then maybe we can go back to your apartment and study or something.”

“Especially the ‘or something,’” she grinned. “Would you have believed it a week ago?”

“Not in the slightest.”

*   *   *

Both Laura and Stacy had been out late on Friday night, mostly hanging around with the crowd in the Student Union lounge as they often did. By now a lot of people had become used to Laura and her steel panties, so they weren’t commented on as much as they had been in her first few days on campus.

While it hadn’t been Laura’s intent to draw attention to herself by wearing her chastity belt in such a way that it could often be seen, it had still done that. She didn’t know Dr. Thompson had commented that she was probably the best-known freshman on campus as a result of wearing it, but it was nonetheless true. She could see that the shock and novelty value of it was starting to wear thin. She felt a need to get involved with something relatively normal, just to give her a little diversion from studies – something where her steel panties wouldn’t be a factor. So checking out the Activities Day tables seemed like a good idea.

She and Stacy had discussed going over and cruising through the place, but this Saturday morning Stacy seemed more interested in getting a little extra sleep. “I’ll check it out later,” she yawned when Laura was up and stirring. “I think I’d grab an hour or so of nap time, then go look things over.”

“Fine if you want to do it that way,” Laura replied. “I’m going to go grab some breakfast, then go take a look at what’s there. If I find something interesting I may hang out a while.”

“Have fun,” Stacy yawned, then rolled over and zoned out.

Laura finished getting ready to go quietly so as to not wake Stacy, who clearly had managed to get right back to sleep. It really wasn’t a big deal to go somewhere without her; though the two were roomies and friends, they were on different class schedules and didn’t do everything together.

Once she was out of the room, Laura went downstairs and walked to the dining hall in the cold, wet drizzle of a clearly uninspiring day. It wasn’t like the previous Sunday, when she and Jan Archer had spent time talking on the steps of the back porch. Although their experiences had been very different, the two of them had a great deal to share. In spite of the troubles Jan had admitted to, Laura found herself admiring the older girl for bouncing back so well from a truly horrific experience, one much worse than she had been through. Jan really was an inspiration! She’d also been lucky as hell, to be taken in by a family who had been just as supportive in their own way as Laura’s had been.

More than once in the past week Laura had found herself thinking that, compared to Jan, her own dependence on wearing her chastity belt had been more than a little childish. But she had come to like wearing it, and while the rape had been the original seed for it, her steel panties had done other things for her as well. And, realistically, when that big guy had broken into their room a week and a half before, she’d been glad to be wearing it – she would have been terrified without it!

Clearly she was going to have to give it up someday, but the time wasn’t quite right yet. Maybe someday she could meet a guy like Cody, someone she could feel comfortable and protected with. Maybe, when that happened, it would be time to bring that part of her life to an end. But that was in the future, and if there was a guy like him out there he hadn’t been revealed to her yet. But who knew? Maybe Activities Day would allow her to meet someone without her chastity belt being the center of interest.

*   *   *

Sixty miles to the north, Mary Lou had no intention of going to Activities Day at Southern Michigan University, not that she could have managed to get there, anyway. She’d been released from the hospital on Tuesday, still hurting, still on painkillers. It was a lot worse than the last time, and she could see the doctor had been right when he’d said it would be a couple months before her jaw could be freed from the wires that held it together.

She knew from past experience that her eating was going to be limited for the next couple of months. She was going to be drinking a lot of chocolate milk and tomato soup through a straw, and that got old very quickly. At least the people in the Meriwether College Dining Hall understood her problem. Someone had arranged it so she could ask for a special meal, which was to say a regular meal that was run through a blender, sometimes with water added to make it possible to slurp her meals through a straw. Maybe it wasn’t all bad; the last time she’d been through this ordeal she’d lost several pounds she needed to lose, but she’d gained it back almost as soon as she could use her jaw again. Maybe this time it would stick a little better.

Mary Lou really would have liked to go down to Southern again that day, to take another shot at reasoning with Nancy. She might have been able to get through to her last time if that goddamn Vixen hadn’t horned her way into the conversation! Nancy didn’t realize what she was giving up by taking up with that smirking guy! If she could just talk with her, reason with her, then maybe she could be persuaded to see the light, to see how much they meant to each other.

But there was no way she could get down there today to try to talk to Nancy. Another limitation of having her jaw wired together was that she’d lost her way to convince Ray to let her use his car. Well, there were other ways she could convince him, and he’d probably go for it, but there was a limit to what she was going to allow a guy to do to her, and she had to draw the line somewhere.

And maybe it would be better to let a week or two go by. In that much time Nancy might well see how futile and useless it was to be hanging out with a guy and would come to her senses. It was a faint hope, but it was all she had right now. But someday, someday soon, Mary Lou knew that she’d have to try again.

*   *   *

Kyle Reed didn’t know it was Activities Day at Southern Michigan University; in fact, to him it was still Hawthorne College, and the new name of the place at best was usurping God’s will.

Even with the Hand of God clearing the way and providing for him, it hadn’t been an easy trip back from San Francisco. It had taken him days to cover the ground by thumbing rides; many of them seemed to be short. More than once he was let out at an Interstate Highway exit ramp, only to see his benefactor drive back onto the highway, leaving him standing there by the side of the road.

He’d only had a few dollars in his wallet when he left the hellish town; there was nothing left of his own possessions besides his cherished Bible. He’d been given some clothing at a shelter he’d spent a night at after he’d been released from the psychiatric hold; they were in a plastic grocery store sack he’d found in a dumpster, along with some rather messy but edible food.

But he had his faith to sustain him! God was testing him, he was sure, making sure that he was strong enough to handle the Mission God had given to him!

His few dollars had soon given out – he had to eat, after all, but the Lord provided sustenance. A couple of different times he’d been walking along the road when he found an apple orchard, so he’d eaten his fill on the provender God had provided for him, and taken more apples with him in his plastic bag.

Even the apples had given out on him after a while, and he got very hungry as he made his way across a barren desert, short ride following short ride. The devil was doing his best to keep him from his Mission, but Reed’s faith was strong and it carried him onward. Eventually, he got a good long ride in a truck from a man who God had obviously sent to help him on his Mission; the man dropped him off at a Mormon mission in Salt Lake City. Reed wasn’t sure if God had meant to send him there, for he knew that Mormons were schismatics who defied God’s true teachings. But they were sympathetic and thought they were doing the Will of God. And besides, the food was free and the room was a warm, if crowded and noisy, place to sleep.

What was better, the people at the Mormon mission found him a couple of day’s worth of day labor. That put some money in his pocket again; it was clearly God providing a way for him to carry on toward completing his Mission.

The money from Salt Lake City had all but given out by the time Reed made it to Chicago. But he was close to Hawthorne now, and he carried on, knowing from his faith that God would provide him a way to do His will.

Several more rides over the course of most of a day got him into Michigan, on a secondary road, perhaps, but one that led toward Hawthorne. For a while there were no more rides, but he trudged onward. Somewhere along the way he saw a beer can lying by the side of the road, and for some reason he stopped to pick it up. In the back of his mind he remembered that in Michigan, there was a bottle and can deposit law, and when he looked at the top of the can, he noted that the can was worth a dime if it was returned!

After that, he kept his eyes open for beverage cans alongside the road. There were not a lot of them; they had been much more common in other states, but here, those cans were like an aluminum mine to him! Before long he had another plastic bag he found alongside the road, and it had over two dozen cans in it. When he passed a country convenience store that was enough to buy him something to eat – not much, but something to keep him going.

Keeping his eyes on the ditches by the road as he walked, he sometimes discovered other things. One time while he was down in the ditch picking up a discarded soda can, he saw a blue backpack lying there. It could be useful, he thought; if he could carry things in a backpack, he would have his hands free to carry more cans. He picked up the pack, and discovered that it had a gun in it! And there were magazines, and ammunition. He couldn’t imagine why someone would have thrown it out, and he had no interest in or knowledge about guns, but knew that they were worth money. Perhaps a hockshop somewhere would pay him enough for the gun to allow him to carry on his Mission for a while. The Lord was providing for him at all times!

Then, not far out of his ultimate goal of Hawthorne, the rains came. He really wasn’t equipped for rain, but the Lord provided an abandoned barn a ways off the road, and he took shelter in it. Best of all, there was another apple tree not far from the barn, which still grudgingly provided a few apples. This, he thought, would be a great place to sit out the rain.

It was. It got a little boring, but he read his Bible and thought about his Mission, the things that he could say to try to bring the people at Hawthorne College back to God. Somewhere along in there, he decided to reorganize his belongings a little. The gun and the things that went with it were just loose in the pack, but after some fiddling around he put some of the ammunition into the magazines to reduce the clutter a little. After that, he thought perhaps it would be a good idea to find out if the gun still worked – it might have been why it had been thrown out, after all. He soon figured out how to get the magazines into the gun and out again, and found the way to rack the bullets into the chamber and worked out the lever that allowed him to pull the trigger. He didn’t actually fire the gun – someone might hear – but thought it would fire if needed. That meant all he had to do was to find a pawnshop. There might be one in Hawthorne; he couldn’t remember one from when he’d been a student at Hawthorne College.

When Saturday dawned, the rain had more or less stopped. It was cold and windy and overcast, but he took it as a sign from the Lord that it was time to get on with His Mission. He packed up his things the best he could and started walking up the road to Hawthorne to do God’s Bidding.

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